Your Right to Know

An advisory panel will help Franklin County commissioners as they consider raising the county’s
sales tax despite Gov. John Kasich’s proposal to block counties from boosting tax rates.

The panel, whose members are to be announced today, will examine the county’s revenues and
expenditures and is supposed to make recommendations about where the county can trim costs and look
for new income.

Franklin County Administrator Don Brown originally said the group, which he proposed to consider
ways to trim costs and raise revenue, should give “prime consideration” to raising the county’s
sales tax. The county now collects a tax of 0.75 percent and was on track to raise about $146
million last year.

That was before Gov. John Kasich unveiled his two-year budget plan this month, which called for
major changes to how state and local sales taxes are collected. State sales-tax rates would be
lowered, but the tax would be collected on more services — creating a net increase in sales-tax
revenue for the state.

The proposal also would roll back county sales-tax rates — Franklin County’s would be lowered to
0.5 percent — and place a moratorium on any rate changes.

The moratorium would begin in July to coincide with the start of the state’s next two-year
budget. That would almost guarantee that no county could meet the public and state notification
requirements to get a sales-tax increase in place before the moratorium.

But Brown said yesterday that legislators are already pushing back against such a moratorium,
and there’s no guarantee that it’ll make it into the final budget.

“We’re going to charge the panel with watching (the state-budget negotiations) but examine all
our options under the current law,” Brown said.

Because the panel is being formed later than anticipated, its members will have until Aug. 1 to
make their recommendations, Brown said.

Commissioner John O’Grady said it is important to bring in outside experts to look over the
county’s budget with a “strong, fresh set of eyes.”

“It’s easy to overlook stuff when you’re very close to it,” he said. “These folks … will give us
a point of view very different from those of us who look at this day in and day out.”

Commissioner Marilyn Brown wrote in an email that the panel’s advice will help the county “
provide ongoing and adequate safety and social safety net services to residents and families.”

Commissioner Paula Brooks said the panel will have its work cut out for it, given the governor’s
proposal. She lamented that no one from the governor’s office had contacted Franklin County while
the proposal was being crafted, and she blasted Kasich for trying to unilaterally determine how
counties manage their budgets.

“This is an anti-local-control measure, and it’s bad for Ohio,” she said.

The panel will pull together financial and economic experts from the community, including
academics, corporate-finance professionals and private business owners.

Ty Marsh, a former leader of the Columbus Chamber and former chief of staff for Columbus Mayor
Michael B. Coleman, will serve as the panel’s chairman. He said yesterday that the group’s primary
focus will be on county revenue, and that it will have to watch state budget talks closely.